As he strode across the concrete walkway to the reception room where the Führer awaited him, Bormann was on edge. He still hadn’t heard back from that bastard Jung. Skiing in Switzerland? Mountaineering? Scheisse, why wasn’t he in the Wehrmacht or the SS? Didn’t he know there was a bloody war to be fought? Damned playboy. Money could buy exemption from anything. But if Kalt was failing, then Jung was his only hope. Kalt might be ruthless and brutal, but so was Jung. And he was a great deal more clever.

CHAPTER 12

Wilde left Sunny and Klara in the trees by a railway track and made his way stealthily towards the back garden of the isolated cottage that they had been studying for the last fifteen minutes. A line of clothes fluttered in the breeze. Sheets and shirts and, most importantly, a dark skirt and white blouse that looked from a distance as though it might belong to a girl of Klara’s age or thereabouts.

‘That’s like my JM uniform,’ Klara had said.

‘Jungmädelbund,’ Sunny whispered to Wilde. ‘Young Girls’ League, you’d call it. Junior section of the BDM – the female version of the Hitler Youth.’

‘But what are you going to do?’ Klara asked.

‘I’ll get the clothes and bring them to you,’ Wilde said.

‘You cannot just steal clothes!’

‘But you have to have something to wear, Klara.’

‘Then at least leave money to pay for them. We are not Jews.’

Wilde brought out his wallet and removed a twenty Reichsmark note.

‘Is that enough?’

‘That is plenty.’

‘Stupid to put washing out on such a day anyway,’ Sunny said. ‘Who puts out washing on the line in December? They deserve to lose it.’

No one had entered or left the cottage in the past quarter of an hour. Hopefully that meant everyone was out; it was a chance Wilde had to take, but he was still worried about dogs.

With only one outhouse, the property did not have the look of a farm. The main building was small and modest, the bricks rendered with a dull grey wash. Wilde wondered whether it might be a railway worker’s home, given the proximity of the line. Up the track there was a signal box. Perhaps that was where the householder worked. With luck he would be there now, the children would be at school and the wife off queuing at the shops. Although the house had no immediate neighbours, Wilde could see a church steeple not more than half a mile away, behind trees, so there must be a village or town there. An unmade road led in that direction from the front of the house. If the woman of the house came back with her shopping, they should see her in time.

Wilde opened the garden gate. He was very exposed here. Beyond the fence there were fields with labourers, but none close enough to see what was going on. Within seconds he had unpegged the skirt and blouse, both already dry. He put the twenty Reichsmark note on a flat stone close to the washing line, and secured it with two smaller stones so that it was easily visible and would not blow away.